Posts from Fancy Foods

Every January, the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco turns into one enormous, bustling food hall for the Winter Fancy Food Show. Here you'll find all the latest food trends, and it's always fun to wander the aisles sampling the creative nibbles coming out — wheels of cheese rubbed with Earl Grey tea, crunchy broccoli snacks, zero-calorie noodles, and new products galore. It's best to come with an appetite.

After Emma and I tasted our way through the show (and wore out our feet in the process), we sat down to decide on our favorites. Without further ado, here are ten new foods coming out in 2015 that you should definitely have on your radar!

Every July the Summer Fancy Food Show descends upon the convention center in New York City, bringing in its wake floods of cookie-makers, cheese-crafters, soda-brewers, and more gourmet jerky than you can shake a stick at. This is the show for anyone who makes fun packaged food, from roasted chickpeas to handmade ice cream.

Ariel and I walked the show and after a few dizzying hours, we had some favorites, and here they are.

Here's a mini-trend I noticed while walking around at the Fancy Food show this past weekend: Tonic water! Yes, that combination of sweet, bitter, and fizzy, so beloved in our summer gin and tonics, has drawn the attention of some small-batch soda makers. Apparently there is a lot of room for improvement in tonic water. I tried three different varieties, and all were significantly better than the big brands I usually drink. One of them is even from Brooklyn!

I am at the Fancy Food show in New York City this week, wandering through miles of aisles, inspecting cheese and yogurt, gawking at the incredible variety of vinegars on display this year, and tasting a "relaxation drink" called Slow Cow. (More on that to come).

This show is the primary place for all makers of gourmet foods (sauce, oil, cheese, dairy, pastry, chocolate...) to show off their wares to potential distributors and retailers. It's quite a zoo of food, but there are some gems to be found in the packed, crowded halls.

One such gem that intrigued me is this organic ghee, made from organic, grass-fed milk in upstate New York. I love cooking with ghee, and having a local and organic source of this clarified butter is wonderful.

No, I don't mean caviar and chocolate covered strawberries, at least not necessarily. The Fancy Food show is a bi-annual event sponsored by the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade and it just ended here in NYC.
I started going two years ago when I went to speak about food blogging. All you need to know is that it's a gigantic trade show (football fields' worth) and that I try to go each year to find a few new gems for cooking. Here are my top ten finds from this last show:

I'm back from sunny San Diego with slightly pinker cheeks, jeans that are just a bit more snug, and a bag full of business cards and media kits. Hello, trade show!

I went to the Fancy Food Show (sponsored, since 1955, by the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade) to speak about blogging and new food media with Beth Kanter and Nina Simonds. After that was over, I spent the next 36 hours pounding the 477,00 square foot floor of the San Diego Convention Center: more than 1,000 exhibitors showing more than, my official show directory tells me, 80,000 food products.